“To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.” – FBI Director James Comey

I have not been following the Hillary email thing since I don’t have the expertise or information to understand it, and don’t have the time or energy to bother about something that has felt from the start like just another Panic du Jour from the Right Wing Noise Machine. My assumption, given the absolute and total certitude of the False Prophets in the Wrong About Everything Party that she would go to jail for all this is that things would end up pretty much as they have today. But of course, that doesn’t make her innocent. What it does make her, as near as I can tell, is a member of the Ruling Class with all the immunities and privileges appertaining thereto. My sense all along is that she regarded herself as above the rules that apply to little people (just like her fellow Republicans in the Ruling Class do), that the Right Wing Noise Machine ginned the base up to believe that This Time For Sure she would be nailed and that they knew it wasn’t really *that* big of deal (much like it wasn’t that big of a deal for Bush and Rove when they appear to have done much the same thing without the Right Wing Noise Machine having a cow about it). And now that she has enjoyed the same immunities and privileges Bush and Rove enjoyed, the Right Wing Noise Machine will spend the rest of the election season encouraging their Frankenstein base of Trumpkins to talk about Revolution and Civil War and whatever other crazy stuff those kooks talk about when things don’t go their way. Anything to win in November.

I’m already seeing lots of people declaring the End of the Republic and all that on Facebook. Because corrupt pols have never before been protected from the consequences of their actions by wealth and power in the whole history of the US. That’s why Nixon lived out his post-Watergate years in a prison cell and Bush/Cheney were convicted of war crimes.

Meanwhile, of course, the real message James Comey sends is clear: It’s not Democrats vs. Republicans. It’s our Ruling Class vs. the rest of us. If a peon does it, he will be punished. If a member of the Ruling class does it, he or she will be protected.

“It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.” – G.K. Chesterton